Ho ho! An evangelical from York has replied in the Guardian to my letter. He says that if Eurovision featured the tuneful songs of his local congregation we might win the competition one year. Well done sir, for a pithy and humorous response.

Several members of my family were religious as well as my sponsor to CH, so at 13 or 14 I felt some pressure to get confirmed. Towards the end of our instruction Corks suggested that we might like to do confession with The Chain. Confession! Wasn't that something that Catholics did? Whatever next, I thought. You'll be trying to sell us fragments of the true cross. Anyway I figured that, like Mary Poppins, I was perfect in every way, so I passed on the idea.

Oh, , golly. golly, golly. If influences had any effect I would have been Cantuar 30 years ago. Godfather and household on par with the Archbishop, server, then Christs Hospital. Then I spoiled it all and got disowned by the family when I married an RC

Calling CH a faith school, even in my day, is like calling the UK a haven of tranquility. Yes, it gave an introduction to Christianity but you didn't come out a priest.

OTOH a friend of mine entered a boarding school at 8 and every pupil came out a fully ordained priest at the end of the sausage factory. He is now vehemently opposed to the church into which he was ordained though he remains a Christian.

Years passed, and I realised more people die, often violently, in the name of 'Faith'. I suppose I am basically still a 'Christian', though my wife, bought up as a Catholic is now more pagan with a dash of C of E thought.

I refused to enter a Catholic church until I attended my wifes Grandmothers funeral

I have absolutely NO time for fundamentalists or radicals in any religion.

Each to their own, in my book, and lets all try to live together peacefully.

Here’s my take on the boys' religious attitudes of the 50s. About 15% were keenly religious, about 20% equally keenly irreligious and most of the rest (about 70%) would describe themselves as C of E if necessary, but not care very much about such matters. Some of them would be confirmed, but for this group any effects of the confirmation did not last very long. This 70% also includes the small minority of those who were not C of E (mainly Noncomformists, with a few RCs and Jews). My impression was that the “Religious” aspect of the CH Foundation did not have a great effect on boys in general. I think these %s would differ little if CH was not “Religious.” A very few boys did move between these categories during their time at CH, but that happens in a non-religious milieu too.

I don’t know what the situation is like today. I suspect the %s have hardly changed, although there are now clearly some Muslims and Hindus at CH and probably many fewer Jews. Do any/many members of these small minorities convert to become C of E? They didn’t (to my knowledge) in my days.

I don’t know what the situation is like today. I suspect the %s have hardly changed, although there are now clearly some Muslims and Hindus at CH and probably many fewer Jews. Do any/many members of these small minorities convert to become C of E? They didn’t (to my knowledge) in my days.

In the mid/late fifties confirmation was just about compulsory unless you were of a different faith.

You have to remember that for a Muslim to convert to another religion brings an automatic death sentence which is carried out in some countries; with one exception the Muslims I knew were forced to and didn't know otherwise to obey their religious leaders. The exception, married to an RC, converted in secret days before his expected death from illness and after many years of hassle from their religious leaders because the wife failed to convert or wear muslim dress..
In Hinduism the family unit (and in some cases the tribal unit) is exceptionally strong and it is very hard to break away from the family and its orders

"Which all goes to prove that Faith/Religion is far more dangerous than the occasional despotic dictator."

Like all generalisations that statement does not stand up to close examination. It cannot be denied that religious wars have resulted in many deaths, but, on the other hand, the "occasional despotic dictator" has included such luminaries as Mao Tsetung, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler, whose score (for want of a better term) lay in the tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions. And all in the 20th century, which is slightly more than 'occasional.'
David

In the mid/late fifties confirmation was just about compulsory unless you were of a different faith.

That is certainly not true. Not the slightest pressure was put on me to be confirmed. It was not even casually suggested, and no one thought it odd that I wasn't. (As it happened, I had been baptized in a Catholic church -- not 'baptized a Catholic', because baptism is ecumenical -- but no one else knew this.)

In the mid/late fifties confirmation was just about compulsory unless you were of a different faith.

That is certainly not true. Not the slightest pressure was put on me to be confirmed. It was not even casually suggested, and no one thought it odd that I wasn't. (As it happened, I had been baptised in a Catholic church -- not 'baptised a Catholic', because baptism is ecumenical -- but no one else knew this.)

I knew this as both my sons were baptised/christened in CofE church, with my RC wife in agreement.
One son is now practising RC and didn't have to get re-baptised.

At Hertford, while I was there, if you were not down as belonging to another denomination and you did not put your name down for confirmation then the Headmistress did ask you why not. As I had been confirmed, I don't know how the conversations with DR went, nor how much pressure was applied.

You were expected to be confirmed in either the Lower V or the Upper V (O level year).

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

I remember the Chaplain (Pullen) once saying that he very much disapproved of people getting confirmed just because they had reached a certain form. And Roger Wilson, the confirming bishop (of Chichester), said he personally thought confirmation in adolescence a very bad thing. He said he thought the debate should be whether you get confirmed as soon as you are old enough to answer the questions (i.e. roughly like First Communion among the Catholics), or whether you should wait to adulthood.

First vicar: How do you keep your church clear of mice?
Second vicar: Simple. I baptize and confirm them, and I never see them again.